Purpose and Meaning of Life

You only lose energy when life becomes dull in your mind. Your mind gets bored and therefore tired of doing nothing. Get interested in something! Get absolutely enthralled with something! Get out of yourself! Be somebody! Do something! The more you lose yourself in something bigger than yourself, the more energy you will have.

In every great time there is some one idea at work which is more powerful than any other, and which shapes the events of the time and determines their ultimate issues.

To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end in life.

He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.

To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man's life.

The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.

Life is no `brief candle' to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I've got to hold up for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

Strange is our situation here upon earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know that man is here for the sake of other men.

One feels inclined to say that the intention that man should be happy is not included in the plan of Creation.

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.

The secret of living is to find...the pivot of a concept on which you can make your stand.

The great law of culture: Let each become all that he was created capable of being.

Do what you can, with what you have, right where you are.

It is easy to perform a good action, but not easy to acquire a settled habit of performing such actions.

Let everything you do be done as if it makes a difference.

The great and glorious masterpiece of man is to know how to live to purpose.

Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, "This is the real me." And then you have found that attitude, follow it.

There is only one journey. Going inside yourself.

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.

It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters in the end.

We must ask where we are and whither we are tending.

Far away in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead.

But if a person has had the sense of the Call -- the feeling that there's an adventure for him -- and if he doesn't follow that, but remains in the society because it's safe and secure, then life dries up.

Three things are necessary for the salvation of man: to know what he ought to believe; to know what he ought to desire; and to know what he ought to do.